An Academy Award-winning filmmaker has chosen his next project. Kevin Macdonald has signed on to direct Roman epic The Eagle of the Ninth, according to an announcement in Cannes by Focus Features. Macdonald won an Oscar for his superb documentary One Day in September and guided Forest Whitaker to his Academy Award for Best Actor in The Last King of Scotland.

Scotland co-writer Jeremy Brock adapted the screenplay for Eagle from the novel of the same name by Rosemary Sutcliff, the first in a series, originally published in 1954. The book is set in the second century in Roman-ruled Britain, telling the tale of a young Roman's search for "the truth about the disappearance of his father's legion," according to Wikipedia. Focus emphasizes the danger involved, with its hero off "to confront ... savage tribes, make peace with his father's memory, and retrieve the lost legion's golden emblem, the Eagle of the Ninth."

The works of snarky author Evelyn Waugh are no stranger to cinematic adaptation, although his writing rarely gets big-screen love like William Shakespeare or Jane Austen. Perhaps it is because his novels are rife with dark humor, rather than heart-wrenching drama or light romance. The last to hit the screen was Vile Bodies in 2003, which became Stephen Fry's Bright Young Things. However, beyond the satire, Waugh also had controversial words to spare on religion. In fact, his novel Brideshead Revisited was considered by George Orwell to be untenable.

Even without the defense of his fellow English writer, Brideshead gets its share of attention. It was made into a television miniseries in 1981, and director Julian Jarrold is now trying to get a big-screen version off the ground. The project, which has been in development for years, is set to start shooting this spring, although the cast has not yet been confirmed. (Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly were previously attached.) Although Jarrold is best known for his recent film, Kinky Boots, he's no stranger to literary adaptations. For television, he's directed classics ranging from Charles Dickens' Great Expectations to Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment.

The screenplay comes from Bridget Jones screenwriter Andrew Davies and Last King of Scotland scribe, Jeremy Brock, which bodes doubly well for the film. Brideshead tells the story of Charles Ryder. At Oxford, he strikes up a close friendship with Lord Sebastian Flyte and joins him on the family estate. There, he falls for Sebastian's sister while experiencing the collide of families, politics and religion. It'll be a particularly relevant film to today's society ... if things continue as planned.